A review by julis
Empress of Rome: The Life of Livia by Matthew Dennison

informative slow-paced

4.0

Good points: Dennison either knows his shit or is cribbing from someone else’s very good notes, because in addition to the ancient historians, he brings in a lot of archaeology, which is incredibly important when we’re dealing with someone with very few contemporary references and a short list of biased references from 2 centuries later. He pulls these all together into a largely cohesive narrative and balances Tacitus’s sexism with...well, literally anything else. His writing is engaging and he generally avoids reductive analyses of the main cast (Caligula once again gets bashed, perhaps predictably).

Bad points: Could he not have done it in chronological order?? Or at least given a timeline? The family tree at the beginning is also missing several branches (and entirely male-centric) making some relations hard to follow.